McCarthy Dismisses Pediatrics Study on Autism

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McCarthy Dismisses Pediatrics Study on Autism

By Radford | Sun Jan 10, 2010 09:49 PM ET

Earlier this week, research published in the peer-reviewed medical journal

Pediatrics found no evidence that special diets have any influence on autistic

children.

This was a blow to some parents of autistic children who had hoped for a cure,

but things took a more tragic twist when Diane Sawyer of " ABC Nightly News "

followed a report of the autism study with, " We asked McCarthy, the actress

and activist for a response. "

Um, okay.

The news directors at ABC News presumably have some of the world's top experts

on hand to provide context and commentary to the new study by scientists and

researchers who have spent decades studying autism.

Instead, they asked McCarthy, a former model and actress who has no formal

education in medicine or autism. Her expertise comes from being the mother of an

autistic child -- a sort of " Mommy Doctorate " M.D., which is sort of like saying

that owning a car qualifies a person as a mechanic.

McCarthy has managed to tap into a strong anti-science, anti-medicine conspiracy

theory sentiment that made convicted felon Trudeau (best-selling author of

" Natural Cures `They' Don't Want You to Know About " ) a rich man.

You might think that I'm too harsh on McCarthy. But who knows how many parents

buy her best-selling books or see her on " Larry King Live " or ABC News and

decide she must be right, and refuse to vaccinate their children for measles,

chicken pox, mumps, influenza, polio, hepatitis and more, fearing the vaccine

will make them autistic?

While she is sincere, she is doing real harm to innocent children and babies by

repeatedly ignoring accurate and correct information about autism in favor of

conspiracy theories.

McCarthy dismissed the latest scientific research as worthless, and the

scientists who conduct autism research as incompetent: " We're the ones seeing

the real results. And until doctors start listening to our anecdotal evidence,

which is, `This is working, it's going to take so many more years for these kids

to get better. Every parent will tell you something different that helped their

child. "

As I watched this segment, I could almost hear the sound of hundreds of

thousands of scientists shaking their heads in disbelief. Let's parse this out:

" We're the ones seeing the real results. " That is, according to McCarthy, the

real results and advances in autism treatment are being made by ordinary moms

like her who write pseudoscientific books falsely linking autism to vaccines.

All those silly doctors with their randomized, double-blind studies don't know

what they're doing.

" And until doctors start listening to our anecdotal evidence ... " McCarthy, like

many non-scientists, seems to think that stories and anecdotal evidence are just

as good as -- if not superior to -- well-controlled scientific studies.

Anecdotal evidence, basically first-person stories, must be confirmed with

rigorous research in order to be validated.

Her suggestion alone sets medical science back several hundred years, but her

last statement is even more remarkable: " Every parent will tell you something

different that helped their child. "

McCarthy doesn't seem to realize that with this observation she completely

contradicts herself. She has claimed in her books and elsewhere that a strict

diet can treat or cure autism, yet in the interview she said the opposite, that

every parent says " something different that helped their child. " That is, some

parents believe that a special diet helped their child; others say dressing

their child in certain colors helped their child; another says something

different, and so on.

This is not science, nor it is helpful. What are doctors supposed to do? Give

desperate parents a long list of things that someone, somewhere thinks might

help their child, despite no good evidence that any of them do?

There is no doubt that McCarthy is sincere in her beliefs, and genuinely wants

to help autistic children. It's just a shame that she ignores and dismisses the

one thing that can actually help them: good science.